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Human
Being
Nature of Man
We are all
made of common clay and that is why we all have the same problems. As someone
has well put it
“We’re all made in the same mold-only some are moldier than
others.”
Nature of Man
Remember that
man was made out of dust
and when dust gets stuck on itself it only turns into
mud.
Nature of Man
As the old
proverb puts it
you can bring a pig into the parlor
but that doesn’t change
the pig-though it certainly changes the parlor!
Nature of Man
Man’s
unhappiness
as I construe
comes of his greatness; it is because there is an
infinite in him which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the
finite.—Thomas Carlyle
Nature of Man
After many
years of studying human behavior at one of the finest universities in the world
Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles remarked
“Nothing I have discovered about
the makeup of human beings contradicts in any way what I have learned from the
Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah
Jeremiah
and Amos
and from the Book of
Ecclesiastes
and from Jesus and the lives of those he touched. Anything that I
can say as a result of my research into human behavior is a mere footnote to
those lives in the Old and New Testaments.”
Nature of Man
With the
discovery of the atom
everything changed
except for man’s thinking. Because
of this
we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.—Albert Einstein
Nature of Man
I still
struggle with the old Adam
and so do we all. Young Philipp Melanchthon
colleague of Martin Luther
once wrote to Luther and said
“Old Adam is too
strong for young Philipp.”
Value of Man
A man should
carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed
“I am but dust and
ashes.” On the other
“For my sake was the world created.” And he should refer
to each stone as he needs it.
Perfection
The closest
to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form.
The image of God in
which man was and is made has been variously explained in detail. Although
scholars may differ on the nuances of the phrase
there is general agreement
that it has to do with dignity
destiny
and freedom.
The assertion that man is
made in God's image shows each man his true dignity and worth. As God's
image-bearer
he merits infinite respect. God's claims on us must be taken with
total seriousness. No human being should ever be thought of as simply a cog in
a machine
or mere means to an end.
The assertion points
also to each man's true destiny. Our Maker so designed us that our nature finds
final satisfaction and fulfillment only in a relationship of responsive
Godlikeness -- which means
precisely
that state of correspondence between our
acts and God's will which we call obedience. Living that is obedient will thus
be teleological -- progressively realizing our telos (Greek for "end"
or "goal").
Also the assertion
confirms the genuineness of each man's freedom. Experience tells us that we are
free
in the sense that we make real choices between alternatives and could
have chosen differently
and theology agrees. Self-determining freedom of
choice is what sets God and his rational creatures apart from
say
birds and
bees
as moral beings.── James
Packer
Your Father Loves You
Harold Shaw Publishers
1986.